The Wolf That Hunts
by Mengde
Summary: ..."Why should the wolves apologize to the one thing that was slower than everything else that they were hunting? It’s all they know how to do, and hurting people is all that I know how to do." The nature of all things Reno.


Hello everyone, Mengde here. I don't own FFVII, etc. The other night, my lovely beta Pen Against Sword and I were discussing the Turks, and how it's easy to forget that they've done some pretty questionable stuff in the pursuit of Shin-Ra's interests. We all love them, but how do they deal with what they've done in the past? I thought we could take a look at one possible idea I had. Please enjoy.

* * *

**The Wolf That Hunts**

**A Final Fantasy VII Fan Fiction**

**Written By Mengde**

The sound of the chopper's whirling blades buzzed loudly through the vehicle's cockpit. Reno sat back in his seat, wincing as pain shot through his battered form. AVALANCHE had done a number on him, despite the futility of it all.

In their wake, dust rose; the origin was the collapsed plate over Sector VII. It had fallen fast enough that only a few of the thousands of people in the sector had had time to scream.

The Shin-Ra Building loomed before them, and Tseng expertly brought the helicopter into one of the edifice's many hangars. He lowered the vehicle onto the tarmac with practiced ease, shut off the rotors, and removed his piloting headset before taking a look at Reno.

"Good work," he said. It was the first thing he'd said since Reno had jumped aboard.

Reno shrugged, then took a moment to regret the motion as blinding pain hit him. "Whatever," he replied. "Would be kinda hard not to do a good job with something as simple as pressing a button." He vaguely mimed reaching for something. "'Whoops, I missed! Are you gonna dock my pay?'"

Tseng narrowed his eyes at Reno but chose to say nothing, instead reaching into the back and pulling the flower girl out from where she had been sitting. Reno watched her as Shin-Ra guards rushed up to the copter, cuffed her hands behind her back, and began to lead her away.

"She better be fucking worth it," he muttered.

"Last I checked, Reno, as soon as you pressed that button there was no reason for you to stick around," Tseng said. "It was your choice to stay and try to fight AVALANCHE three-to-one." He turned his piercing gaze full on Reno and added, "If you were a lesser man, that might have been tantamount to suicide."

"Don't try to psychoanalyze me, Boss," Reno snorted. "I'm not suicidal. If I wanted to end it all I'd have just jumped and then waited if the fall somehow didn't kill me."

Tseng waved a hand in a placating gesture. "I never said you were. I just said what you did might have been tantamount to it." He helped Reno out of the chopper. "Regardless, you need to get yourself checked out. I'll help you to Medical."

Reno barely heard anything Tseng said. He was too busy staring at the flower girl. As the guards were taking her to the hangar exit, she looked over her shoulder at him, an expression of sorrow and pity written on her delicate features.

"Joke," Reno bit out under his breath. "Fucking joke."

"What is?" Tseng asked.

"Your flower girl looks like she's sorry for me. I just killed thousands of people and she's _sorry for me."_ Reno gave a short, harsh laugh. "What a dumb little shit."

* * *

The destruction of the support pillar was blamed on AVALANCHE by the press. Obviously, once Shin-Ra was in shambles and AVALANCHE saviors of the world, the truth – the whole truth – could have come to light, but something held its members back.

On the anniversary of the tragedy, Cloud, in his usual taciturn manner, told the press that "Shin-Ra agents" caused the collapse to try to destroy AVALANCHE, and that the parties involved had been dealt with.

"The times were different," Cloud said to Reno over drinks at Seventh Heaven that night. "You were following your orders, and what's done is done. Nothing is going to undo what happened, and none of us see any point in making you a public enemy. We're allies now, right?"

"Yeah," Reno said indistinctly through his glass.

"Any luck finding work?" the blonde asked, obviously trying to change the subject.

"Yeah," Reno replied.

"Well… good."

Rufus had hired Reno back, no questions asked, even though Shin-Ra was technically dead and gone and the Turks were nothing but a name now. The young ex-president had called Reno "dependable."

The two men got steadily more hammered until Cloud eventually passed out. Reno sighed, shook his head, and slunk out of the bar. They were allies all right, and perhaps they could even someday be friends. It was easy to forget and forgive the old quarrels and old sins. None of it had been personal, none of it had been anything but business.

And, after all, nobody had died.

* * *

The second anniversary came six months on the heels of Sephiroth's brief resurrection. Reno ordinarily was not someone who believed in fate or a higher power, but he thought that the universe must have had a sense of humor to come up with the situation he was in now.

The fledgling WRO was beginning to spread its wings as a global power, and Reeve had been advised by his PR team to make a grand gesture, to reach out to the common man. Then they had quickly struck down all the genuinely helpful things that Reeve had suggested and instead come up with the brilliant idea to make a Collapse Memorial.

Reno remembered that meeting. The Turks – technically, they were just WRO Special Operatives First Class now, but they would always think of themselves as the Turks – attended every important meeting on the principle of being informed. "It's perfect," the PR advisor had told Reeve. "Throw up a statue, make a speech in front of it, great publicity. Shows that you care about the fate of the common man."

Ordinarily, Reeve wouldn't stoop to cheap stunts like this, but the WRO needed public support and recognition, and even with Rufus's backing it had precious little in the way of funds to allocate to advertising. So it was that a month after the meeting, Reeve was standing in front of the newly-unveiled statue, making a speech, and Reno was on security.

If it weren't for him and that damn button, there wouldn't be a Collapse Memorial. There wouldn't even be a Collapse. And here he was, making sure that the unveiling ran smoothly and that nobody got hurt.

Patrolling the edges of the crowd, Reno paused as he felt something hard under his shoe. He lifted his foot and saw that he had stepped on a small, plastic toy gun. He bent to retrieve it and looked it over, amused by the trinket. Guns had never been his style, after all.

"There it is!"

A young boy, no older than six or seven, ran up to Reno and said, "That's mine, mister. I dropped it. Can I have it back?"

Reno considered the kid. He had mussed brown hair, wide eyes of a lighter shade of brown, and a face thick with freckles. "This really yours, kid? I dunno if you're old enough to use it."

"Don't be mean, Reno," a familiar voice admonished him. "Give the boy his gun."

He would recognize that tone anywhere. "Your lucky day," he told the boy, twirling the piece of plastic around his finger a few times before handing it over grip-first. "I see you shooting anybody, though, I'm gonna have to take it back."

The boy rolled his eyes. "It's just a toy. Not like I could actually hurt anybody with it." He looked around, sighted the pack of kids he had detached himself from, and ran off in their direction, making mock gunshots with his mouth.

"Ungrateful little shit," Reno muttered. "You see what I get for being nice, Tif?"

Tifa seemed to materialize out of the crowd, her natural grace lending itself well to moving through masses of people. "Being nice should be its own reward, Reno."

"Oh, that's so sweet," Reno drawled. "I suppose that after I get done reading stories to the orphans I'll go and volunteer at the soup kitchens. What a fucking pile of crap."

Tifa colored a bit when people in the crowd looked at the two of them, but they quickly lost interest and returned to listening to Reeve's speech. "Come on, Reno. You're just being touchy because of… well, you know."

"Pfft. You think I have regrets, Tif? You think I got some complex about what I did?"

"Maybe. I do know that this can't be pleasant for you. I mean, without you…"

"Don't you think I've already thought it? Yeah, this is really ironic. I got that part, no problem." Unconsciously, Reno fingered the prod hidden and spring-loaded in his coat sleeve. "What I don't get is why people have to fucking linger on this so much. First there was last year when the press was doing a story, and they went to Cloud and everything, and I'll admit that he did me a big favor. But now this whole memorial thing – why? Why do people give a shit about what happened two years ago to a bunch of other people that they probably never even met?"

Tifa raised an eyebrow. "Reno, you don't mean that."

"Hell yes I do!" Reno retorted, not caring that he was drawing stares again. "Why are these people here? I'll tell you – they're a buncha self-righteous sanctimonious sons-of-bitches who think that it makes them better human beings to show up and shed crocodile tears at a memorial to people they never even fucking knew!"

"Reno, that's not fair," Tifa hissed. "I'm sure that lots of these people lost loved ones, family, or friends in the Collapse. Yes, there might be some people here for no good reason, but if you just look around… you're letting your guilt color the way you're seeing this."

Reno's expression contorted into something truly ugly. "I do not feel guilty, Tif. Not in the slightest."

"Really? I've talked with Tseng about this, in passing. He says it was the only time he's ever seen you do something really stupid, and that was sticking around to fight me and Cloud and Barrett. You would have died if he hadn't shown up when he did."

"I've been over this with him. Where the fuck was I supposed to go? You guys were blocking the stairway, and the only other option was a jump. I'll tell you what I told him, if I was feeling guilty and suicidal I'd have just fucking jumped."

"Reno…"

"I don't want to hear it, Tif. Not another fucking word. These people, and their fucking Collapse Memorial, and all the sanctimonious bullshit, all of it just makes me want to kill someone. They're all standing around with these stricken expressions on their faces and _they didn't even fucking do it._"

"Um, excuse me?" a man asked from the crowd. "We're trying to listen to Mr. Tuesti's speech, here."

"I ain't stopping ya," Reno said. "Forget whether or not I feel guilty or all of you are fucking hypocrites, there's a nice constant for you. I ain't stopping ya." He stalked off without looking back at Tifa, heading for the opposite edge of the crowd. "You people can burn your own fucking bridges."

Tifa watched him go, her expression a strange mix of pity and anger. One side of her wished that he would just let it go; the other side of her wanted him to screw off and never come back.

She couldn't quite decide which one to listen to.

* * *

By the time that Reno staggered into her bar that evening, looking like he had already had too much to drink, the pitying side had won out, so she didn't immediately throw him out on his ass.

However, she did say, "If you've come here to get me to give you drinks when you got cut off at another bar, I'm not going to."

"Ease up, Tif, I wasn' gon' ask ya," Reno slurred. "Jus' wanted a roof over my head that wasn' filled up wif other drunk fuckheads."

Tifa sighed and motioned for him to sit at the bar. "There's these places, Reno, called 'apartments,' and that's pretty much what they're for. Last time I checked, you had one of your own."

"Oerrated," he laughed. "Besides, I wanted some comp'ny."

"You had better not be getting any ideas," Tifa said warningly.

"Ideas? I said comp'ny, not someone to fuck. Shit, you c'n be so thick sometimes."

She rolled her eyes and started washing the last load of glasses. "I'm closing up shop. If you really want to stay here tonight, Cloud's away on an overnight delivery, so I suppose you can use his bed if you promise not to throw up in it."

Reno didn't respond. He had fallen asleep on the bar.

Tifa heaved a sigh and kept working on the dishes, eyeing Reno now and then as he twitched and muttered in his sleep. Sometimes he could be completely incorrigible.

She was putting the last of the glasses away when the door slammed open. Standing in the doorway were three large, unpleasant-looking men, and faintly visible behind them in the streetlights was a crowd of perhaps two dozen onlookers.

Tifa felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. This could not be good news. The first and biggest of the men stepped through the doorway and she walked out from behind the bar. "We're closing," she said, loudly enough that everyone outside could hear her. "I'm afraid you'll have to wait until tomorrow."

"We're not leaving without him," the man said, pointing a finger at Reno, who was still asleep on the bar. "You know who he is, lady?"

"As a matter of fact, I do, and that's why he's staying here and you're leaving. Move it."

The man sneered at her, reaching into his coat. She instinctively dropped into a fighting stance, but he withdrew his hand from his coat with exaggerated slowness to reveal that he was holding a photograph.

It was a grainy, black-and-white photo obviously taken by a security camera. The photo was of the top of the support pillar, where AVALANCHE and Reno had clashed…

Tifa felt her eyes widen. _Oh, no._

"I remember a year ago when Strife fed the press some horseshit about faceless Shin-Ra agents and all parties involved being accounted for," the man said. "To protect this guy. This murderer."

The photo, grainy though it was, clearly displayed Reno reaching towards the control panel to give the final demolition signal. "My brother's a private detective. Didn't believe a word of it. Ran a little investigation of his own. He found some old security camera archives, filed away in the Shin-Ra Building's data banks, and extracted this." He returned the photo to his coat. "Then he told me about what he'd found. I got people together, people who he'd hurt and people he'd taken their homes and families from. We were just waiting for him to show up again, and whaddaya know, guess who was making a commotion at the unveiling today?"

"If you leave now this'll be easier for everybody involved," Tifa said, her voice sharp with warning. "Let the past be the past. Reno's tried very hard to make up for this."

"Murderers go to prison and rot," the man snarled. "They don't go to work for the WRO and get to live their lives!" The crowd roared in approval, and he continued. "Why're you protecting him, anyway? What the hell do you care what happens to him?"

"AVALANCHE was just as guilty as the Turks in many ways," Tifa replied. "Not just in Midgar, either. We've made mistakes and innocent people have paid for it. All we can do is try not to let history repeat itself and move on. Besides… he's my friend."

"Well, I'm sorry you see it that way," the man said, not sounding particularly sincere. "Take her, boys."

Tifa did some quick calculations, figured that these three would last about five seconds total against her, maybe longer if she wanted it to sink into the crowd that they were out of their league…

"Don't touch her."

All of them froze as Reno got up from the bar, still staggering a bit but looking much clearer-headed than only a few minutes previous. "She's got nothing to do with me beyond the fact that she's my friend. Don't touch her."

"You got un-drunk pretty fast," Tifa observed.

Reno worked at a crick in his neck. "Just needed a quick nap to clear my head is all." He motioned at the first man. "You wanna go or something, big guy? I haven't exercised in a long time."

"I want you to come out here and pay for what you did!" the man snarled. "Because of you, Ilene…" He trailed off into furious, impotent silence for a moment, unable to say anything more. "I'm not the only one. My brother, he lost his son. My friends here, both of them were working in a plant when the plate fell. Every worldly possession they had, gone in a second. Everybody in that crowd'll tell you a story just like ours." He stepped forwardly threateningly, fists balled at his sides. "You think feeling sorry for yourself'll get you off? You think feeling guilty will make everything just magically get better? It doesn't fucking work that way!"

Reno instantly lost all trace of any amicable expression. "Why," he asked, "does everybody keep saying that I gotta feel fucking guilty about this whole thing? Huh? I stayed to fight Cloud and Tif and Barrett because I was guilty and suicidal. I blew up in the crowd today because I was guilty and wasn't really pissed off at the stupid circus that the whole event's been turned into.

"You guys can think whatever the fuck you like, but I don't feel guilty. At all. I never have. Everything's got something that it's good at. Bees are good at making honey, wolves are good at hunting, and I'm good at hurting people. Why should the bees apologize to the dumb fucker they sting for getting too close to the nest? Why should the wolves apologize to the one thing that was slower than everything else that they were hunting? It's all they know how to do, and hurting people is all that I know how to do.

"That's all I've ever been good at, and it's the only way I can live my life. How can I get torn up over every bug I step on if I make my living as an exterminator? It doesn't fucking work. I don't feel guilty because I can't feel guilty. I can't have the luxury of feeling guilty. As far as I'm concerned, it was business. If you guys can't separate the personal stuff that really matters from the casual cruelties of the world then that's your own fucking fault.

"This is like a really, really bad joke. This year what I did gets turned into a fucking memorial, and last year it was covered up by the people I was trying to kill with it, and when I actually did it…" Reno looked at Tifa, his turquoise eyes wide with anger. "That fucking flower girl. They were hauling her off of the helicopter, Tif, and she turned to look at me and she was _sorry _for me. I did this thing, this terrible thing, and she was sorry for me. Why?" His voice cracked and he clutched at his head. "WHY WOULD SHE FEEL SORRY FOR ME?"

"Because," Tifa replied quietly, "Aerith had a way of knowing people. She looked at you, and she knew everything that you've just told us. And she pitied you for it."

Reno said nothing. He merely lowered his head and walked out the front door. Nobody said a word or made a move to stop him.

"That's how he justifies what he did?" the first man finally managed to get out after Reno had disappeared. "'I hurt people, so it's okay that people got hurt?' That's… that's…"

"Stupid?" Tifa asked. "I didn't see any of you objecting or trying to stop him."

"This isn't how it's supposed to be," the man muttered frantically. "Things were supposed to go so differently. This isn't how life works!"

"Whether it's true or not, it's what he believes," Tifa said. "It's the only way he can live with himself. Trying to 'bring him to justice' would be pointless.

"Like he said… you might as well punish a wolf for hunting."


End file.
